polypore

Is it me? Or do you also wonder why there are not more mycologists in the world? Everyone is out chasing birds but as a group the fungi are pretty darn interesting. Like birds they come in an array of colors, shapes and sizes. They also can be found anywhere, any season, but, unlike birds, the fungi hold still long enough for you to admire them. Here’s a perfectly lovely unknown species of shelf-like polypore, a bracket fungi, on the Third Creek Greenway. Like this one, most polypores are fleshy-tough, leathery to woody; and many can survive frost and cold weather.

To look at something as curious as this, like the ruffles on a French shirt, and realize that it too is alive, was born and someday will die. Growing on a log. That's where it will live its entire life, sensing the world as the world goes scampering past. I mean: What could we possibly know about the fullness of being until we have lived part of our life as a ruffle? Oh, if it were only possible.